AVA’s POV
There are people in your life whose absence changes the actual texture of the world. Not just the emotional landscape of it. The literal, physical, and everyday texture. The way a room sounds different without them, or the way a joke lands flat because the one person who would have laughed at exactly the right moment isn’t there anymore. The way you reach for your phone to tell them something and your thumb is already opening the conversation before your brain remembered they’re no more.
Serena Vale was that person to me.
She had been my best friend since high school days when I was fourteen years old. She lent me her last twenty dollars for a bus fare because I lost my money and then pretended she had forgotten about it.
Serena was generous in ways she never announced, carr
